Stories & Insights on What Work Is

	I remember my first job, standing in a closet adding numbers up on an adding machine. My boss was this woman in high heels with her hair pulled back very, very tight. I thought that was how you had to dress!

	I remember that they'd put a pile of coins on the table, and if you made a mistake they took away a coin. Of course, as the youngest, I knew this was going to be impossible for me to win. My images about women at work came mostly from my father, who I think of as having honor in his work with the military, and my grandmother who was very forceful about how things should be.

	My father was a pharmacist, who really a kind-hearted person who loved what he did - but he also did things I'm not proud of. So I got ideas about work you love as maybe being selfish, and that you should do work that was your duty. But I can't be happy doing that in my own life. I keep seeking work that makes my heart sing, that brings a sense of belonging and community with others.

	When I was about six years old, I had the job of weeding the garden at my grandparent's house for 10 cents. When I came in, my grandmother asked how I liked it, and I said I had enjoyed it. Then she said she couldn't pay me because work wasn't supposed to be fun.

	When I had my first corporate job, I hadn't had any role models or any one to clue me in, especially around corporate politics. So when I started working for the West Coast division of a national company and I saw some things that could be improved, I wrote a letter to the President of the parent company back East. Boy, you should have seen how quickly I was told this wasn't a democracy. And, having studied social studies, it was a little hard to stomach the totalitarian aspect of the situation.

	I've enjoyed almost every job I've had. For a while I didn't try to use my intelligence, and just worked in a warehouse moving boxes around. But I got a lot of satisfaction knowing I was moving food to people, and from the physical-ness of the work. Originally, I think I thought you went to work because everyone did, like everyone I knew went to college - it was a custom, a habit, not really even out of survival.

	My first impression, because my mother didn't work, was that women could be nurses and schoolteachers. It was only during college that I discovered that I was capable with computers and that women could do that for a living.

	The last job I had working for someone else, I was given a big assignment - one that I knew was misguided, expensive, and overly ambitious. But they sent a huuuuge limosine to the airport to pick me up, and took me to very impressive offices.... and I have to admit that for a bit I found myself colluding in acting as if the project could be a success. But in the end, my role ended up being helping to accelerate the process of having the project flaws made visible, so they could stop investing so much in it.

	There was one project I was on where so many of us worked SO hard to make something happen... people really puts their hearts and souls into it. And then when a new manager came along and announced in a meeting that they were changing directions, I just couldn't help it, I cried, right there in the meeting... I just couldn't stop crying. And I had known there was tension along the way, but up to thfat point, I had just focused on having the team do good work. Now, I have a commitment to saying what is true for me before it gets to the point where there's such grief things change.